Businesses Tally Losses After Loop Blackouts

Citizens Utility Board Seeks Probe Of Comed

Trade organizations estimated that as much as $100 million in business was lost in Thursday's series of Loop blackouts, and while restaurants sought to make up some of that lost income Friday, commuter lines braced themselves for further power troubles.

Paul Colgan, a spokesman for the Business Owners and Managers Association, said he based the estimated losses on how a half-day of lost work might affect the Loop area. On average, he said, $200 million a day in economic activity occurs downtown.

Lost were business deals, trades, meetings and contract-signings, Colgan said. He added businesses had new expenses because of the power loss such as overtime pay for security guards and engineers who worked Thursday night to monitor their buildings.

In Cook County Circuit Court, a class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of those people and businesses affected by the blackouts--claims that Commonwealth Edison said it was not likely to pay because the outage was not widespread enough to qualify for damage awards under state law.

Meanwhile, the Citizens Utility Board, hoping to sting ComEd with some sort of fine, if not heavy court damages, turned to the Illinois Commerce Commission on Friday, calling for a full-scale investigation into the power outages -- and into wider questions about the decisions that led up to Thursday's problem.

Officials at CUB, a public-interest group that represents consumers, were drafting a formal request that the ICC look not only into the recent string of outages, but that it also examine "the reliability of the infrastructure itself and the management oversight of that infrastructure," said Pat Clark, CUB's associate director.

` But around downtown Friday, there were few reminders that ComEd had had problems just hours before. Offices, restaurants and warehouses were bustling as they would on any other Friday, although many said they were working overtime to make up for business lost the day before.

In the South Loop area, industrial-strength generators guarded the entrances to subway platforms and police headquarters, just in case there were further outages.